Haitham

I now know why it is giving me “5” as the return value, because its counting the result, which is “Array”. So there is a mistake in the syntax.

Please help? I have no clue on how to proceed.

for some weird reason, this is not working for me when it comes to reading my custom field characters, but when i test it myself, it works??

<?php $arabic = "?????? ????? ?? ????? ?????"; ?>
<?php echo strlen(utf8_decode($arabic)); ?>

the above strlen function enables it to count utf characters that have more than one byte as one character. So above, its count was “27” characters.

but when I adopt the same idea for my WP template, strlen counts my summary as “5” characters only, when i know that each summary may have 100+ characters. Here’s the code:

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=3&showposts=10"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'imageThumb', true); ?>
<?php $imageURL = get_post_custom_values("imageBig"); ?>
<?php $summary = get_post_custom_values("articleSummary"); ?>
<div id="articleSnippet">
    <div id="articleImage"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><img src="<?php echo $imageURL[0]; ?>" width="156" height="78" /></a></div>
    <div id="articleSummary"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><strong><?php the_title() ?></strong>
    <br /><?php if (strlen(utf8_decode($summary)) > 40) { echo substr(get_post_custom($before = '', $after = '', FALSE), 0, 40) . '...'; } else { echo $summary[0]; } ?></a></div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Am I writing this wrong?

Michael, thank you so much for your help.

I’m a designer, not a coder. I am having a hard time digesting all of this code from so many references. But my life becomes less stressful because of generous people like you.

Thank you again ??

Hi Michael!
Thanks for your help. I searched Google but unfortunately I was using “WP if latest post condition” keywords, but yours are more relevant, thank you.

I did find one this article which tackled what I wanted:
https://jameswhittaker.com/journal/8-top-tips-for-wordpress-theme-development/

but when I applied it, WP gives me a parse error. Here’s the code:

<?php query_posts('cat=4&showposts=15&order=DESC'); ?>
<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'imageThumb', true); ?>
<?php $imageURL = get_post_custom_values("imageBig"); ?>
<?php $count = 1; ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<?php if ($count == 1) : ?>
<li id="mycarousel-item-1"><a href="<?php echo $imageURL[0]; ?>" rel="lightbox[image]" id="thumb<?php the_ID(); ?>"><img src="<?php echo $image; ?>" width="133" height="97" /></a></li>
<?php else : ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $imageURL[0]; ?>" rel="lightbox[image]" id="thumb<?php the_ID(); ?>"><img src="<?php echo $image; ?>" width="133" height="97" /></a></li>
<?php endif; $count++; ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>

any ideas? Thanks again.

i think i found the answer, a tag called “text-indent” that I can use with a negative value to move my list to the left. Does this validate?